The curse of the falling dollar

Every day, I have to walk past a thousand currency exchanges. And so every day, I have to watch as the dollar keeps falling, and falling, and falling.

When I got to Moldova (five months ago) you could get 12.50 lei for every 1$. Yesterday, you could get 9.20 lei for every 1$. That's a severe fall. And it's really really depressing.

Apparently less than a year ago it was 15 lei to a 1$. When it got to 10 lei to a 1$, pretty much the entire country switched from using greenbacks to using euros.

This is bad bad bad for Peace Corps. We have a finite amount of money, and that money is now worth a lot less here than it was a year ago.

This is also bad for anyone wanting to travel. The little pot of money I have saved to go traveling with is somehow looking less and less like it's going to get me anywhere.

Europeans aren't happy with this situation either - unless they're traveling to America, where all the sudden their Euros are worth 1.5 times what they were worth in their home country.

Hence the sign, above. Apparently the amount of american tourists has fallen so precipitously that we're being pitied and given discounts on food and drink.

Interesting as well, don't you think, that they're citing the subprime market failure as the reason for our current trials.